Whenever I think about the richest of life, I am always taken
back to my darkest times, that informed me of the depths that this life has to
offer.
Oftentimes we don’t know what we
don’t know, and much of life is like this.
As we look back, we come to face this glorious truth, etched
with gratitude:
We don’t know until we have suffered,
having buckled under that suffering,
having surrendered to the sadness of it,
having been defeated by it,
somehow as we got through,
we learned the deeper, richer,
sustaining hope that prevails
over all destinies of despair.
~~~
Endurance pays in the tangible
gratitude of peace, a hard-won wisdom.
How is it that we can sit with those who are in their darkest
lament if we have not been there ourselves, if our empathy hasn’t been piqued by
sufferings too harrowing to imagine?
It’s only afterwards that we recognise that such disciplines are
for our good and not for our harm, and they offer us a future beyond what we
could of ourselves procure.
Isn’t it a stunning reality, then, when we are struck with
gratitude for the things we have endured?
We never forget that when we were stuck in our miry clay, we had but one
option, but to trudge through it, one arduously laboured step at a time.
Is it not afterwards that we recognise that,
for us, ‘but for the grace of God go I’?
We are all encumbered by that which should crush us. It’s our humble tenacity to keep plodding
onward that gets us to where we’re destined.
We only see this through the wisdom of hindsight. It’s faith that we apply that gets us to this
cherished goal. With a courage of sustained
endurance. Our turn to step only the
steps we can take—ours to take, not another’s.
This is something we can only experience firsthand through an
empathy that grows from within ourselves first, and then for others as we are
cast forth into a ministry of giving back what we have first received.
It is a great and very gorgeous thing to suffer enduring every
bitterness and complaint—but we only see this looking behind us.
It is only possible to do such suffering if we go to sadness first
and resist all temptation to enter into non-productive anger, though anger is definitely
the human part of it!
Our sadness, our tears, our lamenting
surrender will heal us—and it has!
It is nearly maddening to imagine that the things that I speak
of are truth. They are hard to hear and
even harder to read, but it is the truth, however difficult it is to reconcile.
It is a good thing for others to see a person suffer and to do
it without revenge rising up, without bitterness and resentment taking over. Such a vision captivates us as inspiring; it
draws us close to the one who has no answer.
Their strength speaks volumes in their weakness.
Many of us want to live inspirational lives, but no such life
comes without costs we’re all so unwilling to bear. But bear these we must if we are to rise above
the deathly stench of a reality too brutal to contemplate.
Rise we must, but too often we rise without giving thanks for
the provision that we have been given—the grace that went with us. It is a gift, most especially of God, when we
rise, as one enduring, humble, grateful, one found faithful.
